Friday 8 July 2011

A House In California



Cheers Mike for sending me this link.  I shall post up here for the others to also have a look at and I'll have a proper look once I'm back in Bath. I like to play games on my massive 27" screen...XD


7 comments:

  1. Cheers for the link Mike, I really liked how smooth and surreal it was. Very poetic with the word, imagery and audio. If I remember correctly, Rumzi mentioned an idea of making the puzzles surreal so this is a very good example for it.

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  2. Yeh that whole saw the table in half, put them together and you get a whole/hole and you can crawl through it. I think though in the context of a game is that it will require so much quess work on the part of the player. It's a clever puzzle but it might be too clever for its own good.

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  3. True, a lot of the time I was just randomly clicking hoping to use the right combination and not really 'thinking' about it. It's the whole 'click on everything until it' vs 'if you think it through the answer will be there' syndrome. I didn't quite manage it in my other game because I wanted players to think but it's very hard to get the balance right. The only game in which I found that the balance was amazing was Phoenix Wright lol.

    But I do like the 'surreal-ness' of A House in California especially the one where you have to make friends with the birds and they all sing in harmony~.

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  4. Yeh same, Phoneix wright is one of the few times when I wasnt randomly clicking things. In the words of the creators of Grim Fandango they learnt after making that game that they should stop trying to "defeat" the player as it just made it furstrating. I imagine the only way to get the balance is to discuss the puzzles with other people and see if it makes sense at least - or just see if they can figure it out. If it takes too long then it probably needs tweaking.

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  5. wow this game was awesome :O but yeah, i think most of the time i got so lost it wasnt fun... it became kinda stressful. i think the way its set out is very clever and all the different options like 'remember' and 'catch' and things were great.. creepy atmosphere but interesting too.. i really liked that you got some background detail on things when you click 'look' or 'remember' too. it added to the creepyness when you know a bit more but giving away everything can be lame..

    hmm not sure if im making much sense, am typing as things come into my head but i really like how this was laid out basically..

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  6. Mike: Sounds like a plan Batman. Yeh it'll be pointless if the puzzles do turn out to be frustrating. I may have more patience as a gamer and playing a few games through despite the frustrating gameplay but I expect the majority of players won't.

    Michelle: I don't think that idea is too bad...you never know we can incorporate small scenes with that kind of metaphysical element...

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  7. Yeh, its like how when I first played monkey island I spent 90% of the time tearing my hair out trying to figure out what to do next but once you get use to the train of logic its actually not that bad. But yeh most people probs wont have the patience.

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